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The Maytrees: A Novel
by: Annie Dillard

List Price: $13.95

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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780061239540
ISBN: 0061239542
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: June 01, 2008
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: June 10, 2008
Studio: Harper Perennial
Sales Rank: 20933

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:

Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems.

In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. But years later it is Deary who causes the town to talk.

In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. She presents nature's vastness and nearness. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Dillard's original body of work.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- A disappointment after Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I loved Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and was excited when I saw the audio-version of The Maytrees at my library. I didn't enjoy the book. I am very surprised to see so many good reviews. I can't imagine we are talking about the same book!

Dillard's use of language in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek had me reading and rereading with joy. The rereading (relistening) I did with The Maytrees was because I couldn't recall the story. I just couldn't connect or care about the characters. It has been said that Dillard cut this book from an original 500 pages; I think the connection was edited out. There are moments of beautiful text, but they don't last or are lost among the flat story.

The story is hard to sum up without revealing too much. It is about the relationship of a man and woman ... Read More

Rating:

- flowery to the point of suffocation
This was a "share" book, given to me by someone who loved it. That was all right because an earlier share book was "Eat,Pray, Love," which turned out to be very compelling. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about "The Maytrees." I found it irritating from the start, with a reliance on poetic language that was so self-conscious I was embarrassed for the author. The characters seem to be drawn out of the mists (perhaps that is appropriate to the landscape of Cape Cod), and as a result "there is no there there." I would not call this a novel, but an extended selection of poetic moments. Anyway, authors should always go back and check Dickens' before sending in their latest works for publication. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Grab your reader from Line One. Prose ... Read More

Rating:

- "Mature experience of enduring marital love...." NOT
The Maytrees isn't the great American novel.

I started reading Dillard's book eagerly, but began to stumble over some of the words. Dictionary in hand, the early chapters held my attention despite the obscure vocabulary. I'm from the Midwest and have no personal experience with life on Cape Cod, but I found I could "see" some of what Dillard wanted me to see.

I found the characters eccentric and off-putting. Initially, I found the main characters, Toby and Lou charming. But none of the characters were ever fully vetted to make me feel like I knew them or could care about them.

While some of Dillard's sentences are exceptionally beautiful and poetic, I had a problem with the credibility of the story. It doesn't ring true. I have been married for 40 years and ... Read More

Rating:

- Once more and ever
It was long ago that I bought the book, on a long, lone roadtrip southwest, in a favorite bookstore alongside the Rockies. I held it, carried it, kept it on my coffeetable, my nightstand, prolonging the sweet anticipation, knowing the coming reward. I have been (no hyperbole) in awe of Annie Dillard from the first encounter, decades ago, with Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (winning Dillard the Pulitzer Prize). Finally, oh finally, picking up what I expect may be her final novel (I heard her interview on NPR at the very beginning of my trip southwest, in which she spoke of the arthritis in her fingers, the agony of the mechanics of writing), now immersed in the solitude of a retreat, I read. I read throughout the day, into the night, until I was done.

Yet never done. Dillard's ability to evoke ... Read More

Rating:

- One of my Favorite Books Ever
This novel is right up there among my favorites, along with Gilead and Housekeeping, both by Marilynne Robinson. I love Annie Dillard's spare and lyrical style. Each sentence is lovingly crafted to say exactly what it means to say in such a beautiful way. I plan to keep this book in the glove box of my car so that whenever I get lost, I can pull it out to read and become reconnected with the most important themes in life--bonds of love and friendship, loss and solitude, forgiveness, the ordinary acts of caring for other people that somehow become extraordinary when viewed through a larger scope. This book gives me hope that I will somehow find my way.

Books : The Maytrees: A Novel